Remember Moviepass? Is still around you, and passing everything to Crypto

Moviepass was once Cinephile’s dream. Throughout the 2010s, the company allowed users to pay a monthly fee to watch a movie a day in theaters. In 2018, it cost $ 9.95 for a subscription. This is lower than what some theaters charged one screening of movies, let alone 30, and the company Went down A year later.

Now, Moviepass has returned and is giving a crypto with a crypt. On Thursday, the firm announced “Mogul”, which allows users to fill the courts and predict which films are willing to win at the box office and which actors will get the prizes. The product, which is available to players, uses a coin in the game and is built on the blockchain sui.

Stacy Spikes, CEO of Moviepass, emphasized Fortune May the coin of the game be like “Monopoly Money” and have not yet decided if “it is real.” The only information that the platform puts on the blockchain is the data related data, such as the performance of a player, he added.

The CEO had thought of creating the tycoon as a prediction market with a crypt or local configuration where the Bettors can make money with those who believe that they will win elections and other events in the real world. However, he and his team finally decided against this, he said.

“When (talk) with the laity and say” Crypto “, it means that you are doing a Memecoin, you are doing something that Trump does, you are doing a dogcoin … that’s not what this is,” he said, in reference to the Mogul.

Failed to Crypto

When he spoke Fortune On Tuesday, Spikes attended a Crypto Conference in Dubai, where he visited an expansive cinema room in a mammoth shopping center. Chose to see Ben Affleck Blockbuster The accountant 2. “Every time I put boots on the ground in a city,” he said, “I go to the cinema.”

More than a decade ago, Spikes raised a million dollars to launch Moviepass, which initially load Users about $ 30 per month. In 2017, Helios and Matheson, a contributed data analytics company, acquired a majority participation in the startup and led the promotion push of $ 9.95 per month that finally sank the company. Spikes was soon expelled from the advice and “reported that it was no longer needed”, as Weather.

Less than two years later, Moviepass left the business and his marketed parent company declared bankruptcy. By 2022, Spikes bought the company again for $ 140,000. “I knew I could re -build something,” he said shortly after the relaunch. (In January, one of the executives of Helios and Matheson beg guilty of values ​​fraud.)

When he has worked at Moviepass 2.0 for the last three years, Spikes sought new funding and found investors arranged in Cripto.

Encourage Brands, a long -time crypt, NFTS focus, drove $ 5 million round seed In Moviepass in 2023, and MySten Labs, the main company behind the Blockchain Sui, led a round of $ 15 million shortly after. Both ascents were for capital and token orders, or the promises of a cryptocurrency still to be released, said Spikes.

“There are two types of businesses that are winning traction right now,” he said Fortune. “Either you are a play of ai, or you are a blockchain or crypto game.”

Spikes decided on blockchain. It has an expensive NFT inspired by anime, holds Bitcoin and Ethereum and has traveled to Hong Kong, Singapore and Denver to attend Crypto conferences. “I think blockchain and virtual reality will be an incredible force,” he proclaimed.

The Moviepass Blockchain game, however, is just part of his business. Subscribers can still pay a monthly pass, but it’s not a $ 9.95 robbery per month for one movie a day. Instead, a “premium” ski pass costs $ 40 for up to five films per month. This may mean fewer customers, but at least, Spikes said, Moviepass is now profitable.

This story originally presented to Fortune.com